Oh look another free to play PvP game. I'm not sure what these devs expectations are. All the faggots already have something to play, and it's integrated into the fabric of their very being. The only way to take that market would be to spend the the dough on licensed characters and spend the marketing dollars paying streamers to make it super trendy.
I think that many of these games were made back when the hero shooter and battle royale trends were at their respective heights, but an obsession with high budget meant that the development lasted far longer than either did.
I think it's moreso greed. Everyone thinks they can be the next Fortnite, but fails to understand that Fortnite was insanely lucky to capture the attention of everyone at the height of the Battle Royale.
Pretty much this. Fortnite was in the right place and right time. It was largely bug free, performed fantastically on just about any hardware, and with an aesthetic that looked fairly good for its time (at least to some). Combine that with it also seemingly fairly easy to maintain and add things for it and you have an absolutely incredible financial success.
Even today, I’ve never heard of Fortnite having issues with major bugs. They’re adding a new experimental game mode every other week and nothing ever breaks. That alone gives Fortnite a massive leg up on all the bumbling idiots who can’t ship a 4 player game without it crashing every 15 minutes.
Fortnite has an update or an event, what, monthly? Weekly, even? There's always something to hook you back in and check out the new stuff. I don't even know the sheer amount of crossovers the game has now; you can have Goku and Batman fight Naruto and Chun-li, that's how fucking goofy it's gotten.
You look at the other live-service games and their shitty roadmaps, and you'll be lucky if you get a balance patch in three months.
The devs expected that because they shoved in every mechanic from all of the other games, the playerbases would all jump over to the new game. Highguard is a PvP shooter where you loot chests for equipment and mine rocks for money so you can buy upgrades so you can control objectives to unlock the payload to assault the base. If you like any single one of those concepts you're supposed to like Highguard.
Games last like 10 minutes and most of that time is spent not interacting with the enemy team. I'd call it a PvPvE shooter but there is no PvE, you just run around pressing interact on inanimate objects.
Highguard is a PvP raid shooter where players will ride, fight, and raid as Wardens, arcane gunslingers sent to fight for control of a mythical continent.
This is basically chatgpt designing a game. I don't know if it's Gen Xers, millennials, or somebody else running the studio, but whoever it is their brains are broken.
I looked at the gameplay deep dive trailer and it seemed very convoluted for what it is. Why would you want to mine minerals with a rhythm mini game, or scavenge loot and buy upgrades and reinforce walls for a 3v3 match on a map the size of a 128 player battlefield game?
a 3v3 match on a map the size of a 128 player battlefield game?
Any studio with even a little competency would have seen this glaring issue far in advance; or even a solo dev who has only a mild passion for gaming.
I wish I could be a fly on the wall during the QA playtest sessions...of course that assumes I were fluent in a foreign language...of course that assumes they even had playtests....of course that assumes this release wasn't just one giant playtest...
I watched a bit of gameplay on Highguard, and it looks so, painfully generic. Reminded me of those fake games kids play in movies or TV. It sounds like the game someone off the street would think of if you asked them about video games.
F2P is the only reason people gave it a shot. And I watched some gameplay- who the fuck thought this would be some legendary big title? Other than Dorito Pope?
Wtf even is that? Dudes riding bears, waving staves around, wearing leather and fig leaves, right next to black chicks in power armor with a sniper rifle... and they're running towards a whimsical castle.
And they can blow up an entire castle wall with a wave of their hand, and summon super-giant-mechas, but need to defend a barrel for five minutes to take out a single wooden room.
Depending on your internet connection 25GB isn't really much of a hurdle anymore. And to the DRM, most people don't give a damn about keeping their PC bloat free for some reason.
Oh look another free to play PvP game. I'm not sure what these devs expectations are. All the faggots already have something to play, and it's integrated into the fabric of their very being. The only way to take that market would be to spend the the dough on licensed characters and spend the marketing dollars paying streamers to make it super trendy.
That's why when they launched Overwatch 2, Blizzard killed Overwatch 1.
I think that many of these games were made back when the hero shooter and battle royale trends were at their respective heights, but an obsession with high budget meant that the development lasted far longer than either did.
I think it's moreso greed. Everyone thinks they can be the next Fortnite, but fails to understand that Fortnite was insanely lucky to capture the attention of everyone at the height of the Battle Royale.
Pretty much this. Fortnite was in the right place and right time. It was largely bug free, performed fantastically on just about any hardware, and with an aesthetic that looked fairly good for its time (at least to some). Combine that with it also seemingly fairly easy to maintain and add things for it and you have an absolutely incredible financial success.
Even today, I’ve never heard of Fortnite having issues with major bugs. They’re adding a new experimental game mode every other week and nothing ever breaks. That alone gives Fortnite a massive leg up on all the bumbling idiots who can’t ship a 4 player game without it crashing every 15 minutes.
Fortnite has an update or an event, what, monthly? Weekly, even? There's always something to hook you back in and check out the new stuff. I don't even know the sheer amount of crossovers the game has now; you can have Goku and Batman fight Naruto and Chun-li, that's how fucking goofy it's gotten.
You look at the other live-service games and their shitty roadmaps, and you'll be lucky if you get a balance patch in three months.
Reminded that even in the glory days it would take OW crew close to a year to rework a terrible meta.
The devs expected that because they shoved in every mechanic from all of the other games, the playerbases would all jump over to the new game. Highguard is a PvP shooter where you loot chests for equipment and mine rocks for money so you can buy upgrades so you can control objectives to unlock the payload to assault the base. If you like any single one of those concepts you're supposed to like Highguard.
Games last like 10 minutes and most of that time is spent not interacting with the enemy team. I'd call it a PvPvE shooter but there is no PvE, you just run around pressing interact on inanimate objects.
I was on the verge of wondering if you were being hyperbolic with that list of mechanics.
That’s what I’ve read from people playing the game. It desperately needs a PvE element/feels like it’s missing enemies/needs larger teams.
It has Borderlands loot crates, but no Borderlands enemies.
This is basically chatgpt designing a game. I don't know if it's Gen Xers, millennials, or somebody else running the studio, but whoever it is their brains are broken.
To stand a chance, that sort of game has to have very attractive characters to look at on top of being fun and well done.
Otherwise they won't manage to pull enough players from other PvP Hero Shooters.
The game isn't fun its characters are brownoids with brocoli haircuts and ''women'' who look like men.
It's basically another Concord, but since it's Free to Play it had alot more gamers try the game before uninstalling.
Using AI to design the game? Nonsense! The six-shooter revolver with 5 ammo slots makes perfect sense, they counted each shot on their fingers!
The devs : ''relax, the players just went to sleep''.
Soon : ''... it's the fault of evil nazi gamers''
I looked at the gameplay deep dive trailer and it seemed very convoluted for what it is. Why would you want to mine minerals with a rhythm mini game, or scavenge loot and buy upgrades and reinforce walls for a 3v3 match on a map the size of a 128 player battlefield game?
Any studio with even a little competency would have seen this glaring issue far in advance; or even a solo dev who has only a mild passion for gaming.
I wish I could be a fly on the wall during the QA playtest sessions...of course that assumes I were fluent in a foreign language...of course that assumes they even had playtests....of course that assumes this release wasn't just one giant playtest...
The game looked retarded from the get-go, glad to see it fail.
I watched a bit of gameplay on Highguard, and it looks so, painfully generic. Reminded me of those fake games kids play in movies or TV. It sounds like the game someone off the street would think of if you asked them about video games.
F2P is the only reason people gave it a shot. And I watched some gameplay- who the fuck thought this would be some legendary big title? Other than Dorito Pope?
Wtf even is that? Dudes riding bears, waving staves around, wearing leather and fig leaves, right next to black chicks in power armor with a sniper rifle... and they're running towards a whimsical castle.
And they can blow up an entire castle wall with a wave of their hand, and summon super-giant-mechas, but need to defend a barrel for five minutes to take out a single wooden room.
Still considerably higher than I would have thought. Orders of magnitude more players than some of the other huge flops lately.
I guess F2P makes the difference between 100k peak players and a whopping 600.
When there’s no initial cost you can get a high trial phase
25GB download and an intrusive DRM are IMHO an initial cost of sorts.
Depending on your internet connection 25GB isn't really much of a hurdle anymore. And to the DRM, most people don't give a damn about keeping their PC bloat free for some reason.
I think it's also the previous flops that made this one have so many people
They all missed out on seeing concord, don't wanna miss concord 2
Out of curiosity, does anyone have the numbers for MOBAs and hero shooters that are doing great right now?
Dota2's peak was 770,000 today according to steamDB, 158,000 for marvel rivals.
And apex legends (ambiguously on the edge of a hero shooter/BR) used to get ~200k daily, but has been drifting down for a while now.
All steam players only, so aside from DOTA2, that is missing a significant number of other players.